author of speculative fiction

This is the online home of Christopher Rowe, science fiction and fantasy author, great cook, raconteur, and independent bookseller. (Some of these things may be lies. Or none of them.) His story collection, Telling the Map, will be released by Small Beer Press in July 2017. He also co-writes a series for younger readers, the Supernormal Sleuthing Service, with his wife, author Gwenda Bond, which launches this year from Harper's Greenwillow imprint.

He is currently hard at work on Sarah Across America, an unusual fantasy novel about maps and megafauna, among sundry short stories, and the second installment of the Supernormal Sleuthing Service. His first novel, Sandstorm, fulfilled his childhood dream of writing a D&D novel and was published by Wizards of the Coast. He has also published a couple of dozen stories, and been a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy and Theodore Sturgeon Awards. He doesn't blog nearly often enough, but when he does, you can find the entries below. If you want to catch him more regularly, he's frequently time-wasting at Facebook.

April 06, 2017

Well, a singular prize anyway, and one I hope you find fabulous should you win it. Here's the deal. I'll mail a randomly determined person who comments on this post one copy of the advance uncorrected proof of my upcoming collection,Telling the Map. I will sign and personalize it or not at your preference. All you have to do to enter to win is write a comment on this blog post (the one you're reading right now) and make sure to sign in in such a way that you leave a good email for me to reach you after the drawing, which I'll need so I can get your physical mailing address. Your email isn't viewable by other readers or commenters. Make sense?

The text of your comment should consist of whatever you want to write. A greeting, a haiku, a barbaric yawp, whatever. Okay? Comment! Contest runs through midnight Lexington, Kentucky, USA time, 13th April, one entry per person, please!

March 31, 2017

Because I'm aware that a fair number of folks who are likely to see this post are not, on the other hand, likely to read this in my upcoming collection, here I offer the text of the (brief) acknowledgements page of Telling the Map.

The stories in this book were all developed and improved by their original editors, to whom I owe a great debt. They are Ellen Datlow, Gavin J. Grant, Susan Marie Groppi, Kelly Link, David Moles, Jonathan Strahan, Gordon Van Gelder, and Sheila Williams. Gavin and Kelly also edited this collection as a whole, and published it, for which I offer thanks.

As a writer, and as a person, I have benefited enormously from my association with several workshops. I first learned to take myself seriously as an artist and to think carefully about the crafting of stories at the Clarion West Workshop in Seattle in 1996. I completed my formal training as a writer under the tutelage of Derek Nikitas at the Bluegrass Writers Studio of Eastern Kentucky University. Most of all, though, I here acknowledge the sincere thanks I owe to those many colleagues who read and critiqued most of these stories at the annual Sycamore Hill Writers Workshop, now guided by my best unbeaten brother, Richard Butner.

Finally, all who read these stories should know that almost none of them would have been even begun, much less been finished and published, if it weren’t for the essential, indispensable contributions to my art and to my life made by my wife, Gwenda Bond. Whatever I have accomplished as a storyteller in the 21st century, I could not, would not, have done without her.

March 29, 2017

In addition to the fairly standard fictioneering I do (subcategories science fiction and fantasy), I also dabble in game design. Those of you who play the Pathfinder tabletop role-playing game might be interested in this new series of short adventures out for electronic distribution later today, "House of Harmonious Wisdom." The scenarios are designed for play in Paizo's Pathfinder Society organized play campaign, but can be easily adapted to any Pathfinder game and, without too much trouble, for other fantasy RPGs as well. This was a lot of fun to work on, and I hope people have fun playing the quests designed by me and my co-authors and developers.

February 24, 2017

As most of you probably know, I work with George RR Martin and a bunch of other writers in a group called the Wild Cards Consortium, which produces the vast, ongoing Wild Cards series of shared world anthologies. It's an alternate history series of interlinked stories that started back in the 1980s and is still going strong. Now is a great time to start reading the books (23 so far, and more to come!) and stories, because tor.com has announced this guided group read (or reread) of the series, which you can read all about here.

February 20, 2017

I am so pleased today to reveal the cover of my upcoming collection, Telling the Map. The art is by the wonderful Kathleen Jennings, and I couldn't be happier with what my publishers at Small Beer Press have done with the design. The concept for the cover originated with Gwenda Bond, who was inspired by the maps of Pauline Baynes.

The book, due out July 11th, collects ten of my stories, one of which—a forty thousand word novella—is new. The new novella is "The Border State," a prequel to my Hugo- and Nebula-nominated story, "The Voluntary State," and here, friends, is the opening.

Look down on the Liberty Hills of Kentucky where they spring up north of the traitorous, twisting Green River. Look down on untended fields and tumbledown houses; look for a clean pavement line stretching along a ridge top, a road punctuated by empty churches and empty stores.

See twin bicyclists, working hard. The gold of their jerseys matches the springing hawkweed crowding the lowland fields, the blue of their shorts is a half dozen shades deeper than the cloudless sky.

Here is the brother, Michael, a sprinter. His legs are sculpted pistons, bunched muscles that push and demand, exhort and explode. Michael is an unsubtle cyclist, capable of terrifying speed along the flats, of finishing spurts that demoralize other riders and electrify the Viewers at Home.

Here is the sister, Maggie, a climber. She dances—this is the parlance of commentators—she dances on the pedals. She is a bird with strengths hidden and unhidden, with secret discipline and public fire. She breathes metronomically; she pedals in perfect circles.

This day above the Green, they trained for a race they might not ride. They awaited trustworthy word but had given up hope of anything but an unremarkable day in the saddle.

Then Michael killed a telephone.

The book is available for preorder here or at the usual online retail places.

October 07, 2014

Today marks the launch into the world Jonathan Strahan's latest anthology, Fearsome Magics, which includes my new story, "The Dun Letter." I hope you'll all consider picking up a copy from wherever you buy books. If you're an Amazon user, click here. If you're not, please order from your local bookstore or the online retailer you prefer. Cheers!

April 07, 2014

This is proving a busy month for me as I finish up my last full semester of graduate school (I'll be doing a brief residency in Lisbon in July as well to fulfill the final requirements). I defend my thesis novel on April 23rd, Shakespeare's 450th birthday, and I have a couple of short papers to write, but otherwise, come the 30th, I'm done.

Upcoming travel includes WisCon over Memorial Day weekend. Greatly look forward to getting back there after we've not been able to attend for several years. I'll be back at the Sycamore Hill workshop in North Carolina in June, then the aforementioned Lisbon trip in July, and then no more travel that I can think of until the World Fantasy Convention in Washington, DC in October.

On the writing front I've got several stories in process but am mainly concentrating on two things. The first is revision of my thesis novel, Sarah Across America, which I hope to have "agent-ready" by the end of the summer. And I also want to complete and revise a very long novella, "The Border State," which is the prequel to my story "The Voluntary State." Plus I need to write one new piece for Sycamore Hill and two new (shortish) pieces for Lisbon. I'm thinking of putting together a collection in the fall to submit to publishers. Oh! And Gwenda and I will soon be revising the middle-grade novel we wrote together. So maybe by the end of the year I'll have three books doing the rounds.

The only thing in the publishing pipeline at the moment is a short story, "The Dun Letter," which will be out in Johathan Strahan's anthology Fearsome Magics in October. I'm really looking forward to this book as it has a great lineup of writers involved, including my Clarion West classmate Justina Robson.

January 15, 2014

This past Sunday, my peers in the Bluegrass Writers Workshop and I finished up our Winter Residency with a group reading. I thought I'd share the two pieces I read with all y'all. Both of them are from a pretty long time ago, but they were fun to read.

First, my one and only published poem, which appeared in November 2001 in the ninth issue of Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet. I wrote the original version of this found poem for a creative writing class under Frederick Smock at the University Louisville even longer ago than that. Before the war, even.

OUR PRIZE PATROL WILL FIND YOU, NO MATTER WHERE YOU ARE

Dear CHRISTOPH ROWE,Congratulations!

You have passed throughPhases one and twoAnd have enteredThe final phase.

Do not forgetTo completely fill out every line.

Do not neglectThe many supplemental prize stamps.

Do not overlookOur fabulous offers.Where else will you find savings such as these?

Do not delay, CHRISTOPH ROWE.Affix the proper postage.Sign the certificate.

There is simplyTooMuchAt stake.

And then I read a piece of flash fiction (based on a true story!) which I wrote as a birthday present for Gwenda and which guest stars the late, great George Rowe the Dog, Poster Boy For American Values. "Seared Scallops and Steamed Green Beans" first appeared in the webzine Infinite Matrix on July 12th, 2003 in honor of Gwenda's birthday, and was then reprinted in the Two Cranes Press anthology Scattered, Covered, Smothered in 2004. You can read it here.